Un/doing ‘business’ in Cape Town: Narratives of gender queer sex workers

‘Business’ is the going professional terminology for sex work in South Africa. Often times it also doubles as a covert term due to the criminalised nature of sex work, on judicial and moral grounds, in South Africa. Yet sex work is a livelihood for bodies that have been placed outside the margins of the mainstream political economy; such bodies reside along margins of differentiation of race, gender, class and sexuality, produced through histories of disposition rooted in colonisation and apartheid in South Africa. Although this is a predominantly heterosexual and cis-gendered industry, what then does it mean to ‘do business’ for gender queer sex workers? How do they navigate a heavily heterosexist and violent political economy that alienates African-ness from same-sex/gender intimacies, and does not foreground sexual pleasure? This article will centre the narratives and lived experiences of gender queer sex workers in Cape Town, based on an ethnography with sex workers carried out over a period of three and a half years. Working within the framework of performance as research – a curatorial methodology and praxis – I will offer some insight on gender queer sex workers as bodies out of place. I argue street-based sex workers’ narratives proliferate as a cascade of space invaders by ‘un/doing business’ both within a heavily criminalised, heterosexist frame and political economy in Cape Town, to contribute to the GDP as well as centre sexual pleasure. In addition, the curatorial praxis deployed as a cascade of space invasion works towards humanising sex workers by foregrounding their everyday lives as well as contributing to the collective agenda of decriminalisation and destigmatisation of sex work in South Africa.